The Economics of Todbir

Recent complaints from senior politicians suggest growing frustration: Too much time is being spent entertaining todbir (lobbying) -- the use of personal connections or informal influence to secure outcomes outside formal processes. The implication is clear: People should stop seeking undue favours.

It is an appealing narrative. It casts the public as opportunistic, and the state as burdened by those trying to bypass the system. In doing so, it shifts responsibility away from institutions and onto citizens.

But it misses a more fundamental point.

Lobbying is not a moral failure. It is a response to institutional failure.

In theory, the state operates through rules, procedures, and predictable outcomes. In practice, these mechanisms often fail to deliver timely, fair, and consistent results.

A mid-sized business in Dhaka, fully compliant on paper, may receive a sudden tax notice -- large, opaque, and based on shifting interpretations. Contesting it could take months, if not years. Operations cannot wait. So, the owner tries to “reach someone.” The objective is not evasion or advantage, but correct application of the law.

 A 2025 survey by the Centre for Policy Dialogue found that over 72% of firms reported bribery and harassment by tax officials as major obstacles to growth.

The pattern repeats across sectors. A drone importer is penalized for using the “toy” category -- standard practice given the absence of proper classification -- while the real issue, a missing tax category, is ignored.

 A contractor completes public work, yet payment stalls in administrative limbo, leaving informal intervention as the only way to recover what is owed.

Routine processes -- land records, licences, approvals -- remain opaque and discretionary, enabling extraction.

None of these cases are exceptional. They are the system.

Even the judiciary -- the supposed last recourse against such pressures -- is not immune. According to the World Bank, Bangladesh ranks in the bottom third globally for judicial independence, with cases often dragging on for years and outcomes exposed to external influence rather than consistent application of the law.

Lobbying fills the gaps left by these weak institutions, providing protection where enforcement is arbitrary and speed where formal systems stall.

However, when confronted with such requests, officials position themselves as providers of favours. What remains unacknowledged is that it is the failure to build efficient and predictable institutions that has made lobbying a necessity rather than a choice.

A simple analogy makes this clear.

If you check into a hotel room and find a rat, you do not quietly accept it. You demand a solution -- a new room, a refund, or immediate action. You would not consider it a favour if the hotel fixed the problem. You would consider it your right.

The hotel would owe you an apology, not your gratitude.

Now replace the hotel with the state.

When citizens or businesses face arbitrary treatment, delays, or harassment, their instinct to escalate is no different. The only difference is that, unlike a hotel, the state often lacks clear and reliable channels through which such grievances can be resolved. As a result, people turn to lobbying.

These informal channels do not just carry problems. They often carry solutions.

Suppose someone has the expertise to improve government efficiency or help it achieve its stated goals. In many cases, there is no formal channel through which such contributions can be communicated. As a result, the only external ideas that reach decision-makers are those that pass through informal networks, often mediated by senior officials.

Yet ideas that emerge through these channels face a distorted form of evaluation. They are often treated with suspicion and dismissed as self-interested, causing many valuable ideas to fall through the cracks. At the same time, other ideas are given undue importance and accepted without being assessed on their merit.

When they come from a sufficiently influential source, they may be passed along without scrutiny. As a result, many weak or poorly conceived ideas also make their way into the system through these same channels.

The failure, therefore, does not lie with those attempting to contribute, but with institutions that lack mechanisms to recognize and assess external input.

Many countries have addressed this gap by establishing structured channels to absorb external ideas. These include public consultations, transparent procurement processes, and dedicated innovation platforms. Such systems are built on a simple recognition: Governments do not have a monopoly on good ideas.

If the objective is to reduce lobbying, the solution is not to restrict access to decision-makers. Rather, it is to make informal access unnecessary. The reforms needed to achieve this are not inherently complex. Formal escalation mechanisms, such as independent grievance systems and time-bound dispute resolution processes, can reduce the need for informal intervention.

Similarly, structured channels for receiving and evaluating external ideas would ensure that contributions are assessed on their merit rather than their source. Basic process transparency -- through written justifications and digital audit trails -- would further limit arbitrary enforcement and discretionary decision-making.

The difficulty, however, is not in identifying these solutions, but in their persistent lack of implementation. This shifts the question from one of capacity to one of willingness.

One indication of this reluctance is the continued resistance to meaningful digitization, which is often the first step toward transparency. Many government offices still rely heavily on verbal instructions and manual processes, with digitization remaining largely symbolic.

In the absence of traceable records -- documenting what decisions were made, by whom, and when -- discretion expands, often at the expense of consistent, rule-based governance.

Successive governments in Bangladesh have attributed these inefficiencies to the legacy of previous regimes. However, given how openly the rapid politicization of institutions is both acknowledged as standard practice and justified as necessary for smooth operations, this explanation appears insufficient.

When new governments take office, postings and transfers are routinely used to bring forward politically aligned officials. Those who do not align often adapt quickly, at least outwardly, to avoid professional consequences. In many cases, such realignments begin even before a government formally assumes power.

This pattern is visible across institutions, including the civil service, the central bank, and regulatory bodies. In such an environment, it becomes difficult to attribute institutional failures solely to the past.

This context is important because discretion serves multiple functions. It is not only a mechanism for extraction, through delays, harassment, or informal payments, but also a tool for allocating advantage.

The same opacity that enables rent-seeking also allows preferential outcomes to be extended when needed, often to those with political or personal proximity to power. This dual function helps explain the resistance to implementing even relatively straightforward reforms.

In this setting, todbir persists not because citizens reject rules, but because rules alone are often insufficient to secure fair outcomes.

Dr. Mariha Tahsin is a Senior Economist at the Government of Alberta’s Finance Ministry.